YouTube removes Project Veritas video on Pinterest’s ‘censorship of conservative views’

YouTube has removed a video which details how Pinterest actively suppressed conservative viewpoints on its website, sparking accusations that the Silicon Valley tech giants are working in concert to silence speech they don’t like.

Created by Project Veritas, the offending video cites internal documents showing that Pinterest designated phrases such as “Bible verses” and “Christian Easter” as “sensitive terms” and placed an influential pro-life website on a pornography blacklist. The group, Live Action, was permanently banned from Pinterest for spreading “conspiracy theories” on the same day that the Project Veritas investigation went public.

The report, which featured an interview with a Pinterest employee who blew the whistle on the troubling thought-policing, was swiftly removed by YouTube, apparently due to a privacy claim by a “third party.”

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe denounced YouTube’s decision in a statement posted on Twitter.

“The established media and technology are so afraid of investigative journalism they need to censor it. YouTube calls REPORTING on someone by showing their face and name, and how they added a pro-life group to a porn blacklist, a ‘privacy complaint.’ Would they do this to NYT?” he wrote.

The incident has been denounced by those on the left and right.

“Unbelievable. @Youtube is now deleting content it doesn’t want people to see. Sounds pretty Orwellian to us,” tweeted conservative group PragerU.

Independent journalist Luke Rudkowski expressed similar shock at the move.

Ironically, just hours before YouTube pulled the video, O’Keefe received a slap on the wrist from Twitter for sharing internal communications from Pinterest which show employees denouncing conservative commentator Ben Shapiro as a “white supremacist.” The employees then placed Shapiro’s name on their “sensitive terms” list.

The investigation – and its subsequent silencing on YouTube – comes amid growing fears that Silicon Valley is actively working to suppress conservative views on their platforms. Bans and suspensions that seem political in nature have become so frequent that even US President Donald Trump has weighed in on the issue, promising that he is closely monitoring how tech giants treat their right-leaning users.

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